Disability humor raises a hidden paradox that makes people feel uncomfortable. What is so funny about having a disability when others think that it is a tragedy? This article analyzes the social creation, context, purposes and consequences of disability humor. Disability humor is seen to be anchored simultaneously in tragedy and comedy so that both literary vehicles give meaning to the disability experience.

Made-Up Minds addresses fundamental questions of learning and concept invention by means of an innovative computer program that is based on the cognitive ...

Bovine growth hormone is a protein that occurs naturally in cattle. A chain of 190 amino acids, bGH is produced by the pituitary gland and helps to regulate a cow’s lactational cycle; generally speaking and up to a certain point, the more bGH a cow has, the more milk she gives. Using the techniques of genetic engineering, researchers at Monsanto Company have isolated the gene that produces the protein and devised low-cost techniques to manufacture it. Bacteria are placed into fermentation (...) chambers where they multiply rapidly; lab technicians then extract and purify the final product, which is identical to the naturally occurring protein in 189 of the 190 amino acids; and the product is then injected into cows. (shrink)

Cybersecurity research often describes people as understanding internet security in terms of metaphorical mental models (e.g., disease risk, physical security risk, or criminal behavior risk). However, little research has directly evaluated if this is an accurate or productive framework. To assess this question, two experiments asked participants to respond to a statistical reasoning task framed in one of four different contexts (cybersecurity, plus the above alternative models). Each context was also presented using either percentages or natural frequencies, and these tasks (...) were followed by a behavioral likelihood rating. As in previous research, consistent use of natural frequencies promoted correct Bayesian reasoning. There was little indication, however, that any of the alternative mental models generated consistently better understanding or reasoning over the actual cybersecurity context. There was some evidence that different models had some effects on patterns of responses, including the behavioral likelihood ratings, but these effects were small, as compared to the effect of the numerical format manipulation. This points to a need to improve the content of actual internet security warnings, rather than working to change the models users have of warnings. (shrink)

Discourse about the use of animals in biomedical research usually focuses on two issues: its empirical and moral use. The empirical issue asks whether the use of nonhumans in experiments is required in order to get data. The moral issue asks whether the use of nonhumans can be defended as matter of ethical theory. Although the use of animals in research may involve a plausible necessity claim, no moral justification exists for using nonhumans in situations in which we would not (...) use humans. (shrink)

Gary L. Cesarz - Spinoza's Book of Life: Freedom and Redemption in the Ethics - Journal of the History of Philosophy 43:3 Journal of the History of Philosophy 43.3 361-362 Steven B. Smith. Spinoza's Book of Life: Freedom and Redemption in the Ethics. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003. Pp. xxvi + 230. Cloth, $35.00. Smith's well-crafted narrative contributes substantially to revealing the moral and political intentions "at the core" of the Ethics . Its focus is the role and (...) possibility of freedom in Spinoza's metaphysics, based on Smith's thesis that a version of teleological eudaemonism and democratic politics are the principal themes of the Ethics. Indeed, Smith considers the Ethics a "founding document of . . . democratic individualism" . He places Spinoza in his Enlightenment context, building on known.. (shrink)

"An essential overview of an important intellectual movement, Logical Empiricism in North America offers the first significant, sustained, and multidisciplinary attempt to understand the intellectual, cultural, and political dimensions of ...

Reasoning about social groups and their associated markers was investigated as a particular case of human reasoning about cue-category relationships. Assertions that reasoning involving cues and associated categories elicits specific probabilistic assumptions are supported by the results of three experiments. This phenomenon remains intact across the use of categorical syllogisms, conditional syllogisms, and the use of social groups that vary in their perceived cohesiveness, or entitativity. Implications are discussed for various theories of reasoning, and additional aspects of social group/coalitional reasoning (...) are also discussed. (shrink)

In Good and Real, Gary Drescher examines a series of provocative paradoxes about consciousness, choice, ethics, quantum mechanics, and other topics, in an effort to reconcile a purely mechanical view of the universe with key aspects of our ...

Discourse about the use of animals in biomedical research usually focuses on two issues. The first, which I will refer to as the “necessity issue,” is empirical and asks whether the use of nonhumans in experiments is required in order to gather statistically valid information that will contribute in a significant way to improving human health. The second, which I will refer to as the “justification issue,” is moral and asks whether the use of nonhumans in biomedical research, if necessary (...) as an empirical matter, can be defended as a matter of ethical theory.If it is not necessary as an empirical matter to use animals in research, then there is no need to inquire about moral justification. Therefore, I examine the necessity issue first. The argument that it is necessary to use nonhumans in biomedical research, though flawed, is at least plausible, unlike our necessity arguments for other animal uses. I then discuss the justification issue and conclude that we cannot morally justify using nonhuman animals in research. (shrink)

Special design criteria are largely unable to discriminate between claims that specific competencies in judgements under uncertainty are a result of an adaptation for representing naturally sampled frequencies, or due only to inherent properties of such a format. Because divisions between these perspectives are thin, evidence via additional criteria are persuasive only in combination, using inference to the best available explanation.

Gary L. Cesarz - Kant and the Metaphysics of Causality - Journal of the History of Philosophy 45:1 Journal of the History of Philosophy 45.1 166-167 Muse Search Journals This Journal Contents Reviewed by Gary L. Cesarz Southeast Missouri State University Eric Watkins. Kant and the Metaphysics of Causality. Cambridge-New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Pp. xi + 451. Cloth, $75.00. Paper, $32.99. Eric Watkins' book is a substantial contribution to Kant scholarship, metaphysics, and the philosophy of science. (...) It could change the debate on the nature of causality, for it illuminates the advantages of Kant's critical conception of causality over the Humean theories favored today and outlines how Kant's analysis clarifies certain contemporary issues clustered around the notion of causality. Watkins' interpretation of Kant on.. (shrink)

Encyclopedia entry for the British mathematician and American Philosopher Alfred North Whitehead. Usefully summarizes his life and work for non-specialists and, more especially, interested persons outside of the philosophical disciplines per se.

Over the last generation, the womanist idea--and the tradition blooming around it--has emerged as an important response to separatism, domination, and oppression. Gary L. Lemons gathers a diverse group of writers to discuss their scholarly and personal experiences with the womanist spirit of women of color feminisms. Feminist and womanist-identified educators, students, performers, and poets model the powerful ways that crossing borders of race, gender, class, sexuality, and nation-state affiliation(s) expands one's existence. At the same time, they bear witness (...) to how the self-liberating theory and practice of women of color feminism changes one's life. Throughout, the essayists come together to promote an unwavering vein of activist comradeship capable of building political alliances dedicated to liberty and social justice. Contributors: M. Jacqui Alexander, Dora Arreola, Andrea Assaf, Kendra N. Bryant, Rudolph P. Byrd, Atika Chaudhary, Paul T. Corrigan, Fanni V. Green, Beverly Guy-Sheftall, Susan Hoeller, Ylce Irizarry, M. Thandabantu Iverson, Gary L. Lemons, Layli Maparyan, and Erica C. Sutherlin. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.2 (2003) 297-299 [Access article in PDF] Pappas, George S. Berkeley's Thought. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000. Pp. xi + 261. Cloth, $39.95. Pappas' work is a judicious interpretation of three major themes in Berkeley's thought: his denial of abstract general ideas, theory of immediate perception, and appeal to common sense. Pappas modestly characterizes his aim to illuminate how these themes are connected (...) as one of many ways to approach Berkeley's philosophy. This book, though, is no modest accomplishment. Given the fundamental character of the first two themes and the skill with which he explores them, Pappas does more than connect three themes. He illuminates Berkeley's positions on matter, existence, essepercipi, and the Luce-Jessop thesis that Berkeley is a common sense realist (CSR). The book is broader in scope than its modest beginning suggests. It is a first-rate commentary, meticulous yet highly readable.Chapter I outlines Pappas' thesis and the hermeneutical distinctions he applies in his analysis and evaluation of Berkeley's arguments. He distinguishes two ways of evaluating theories: in light of the assumptions and standards operative when it originally appeared, and in light of those operative in our time. Judged either way, Pappas defends Berkeley's modern temper and continuing relevance, for his arguments fare better than commonly supposed.The next three chapters cover Berkeley's opposition to abstract ideas; Locke's [End Page 297] version mainly, but Malebranche, Leibniz and others are mentioned. Pappas convincingly argues that the denial of abstract ideas is fundamental to Berkeley's position on existence, perception and other central tenets of immaterialism. He opens by criticizing the thesis that Berkeley's rejection of the doctrine is "localized;" textually to the "Introduction" to the Principles, and philosophically to Berkeley's defense of nominalism and his views on language. This thesis, Pappas proves, is too narrow. He marshals textual evidence from the body of the Principles and other works to show the breadth of Berkeley's concern over the problems the doctrine engenders. He then examines the impact of the doctrine, if unchecked, on Berkeley's positive views.Pappas shows how such concepts as material substratum, primary and secondary qualities, existence as a predicate, and representationalism involve abstract ideas. This makes Berkeley's plan of attack plain: if abstract ideas can be undermined, the negation of the related concepts follows. The arguments required to accomplish this, however, are more sophisticated than many realize. To show this, Pappas distinguishes four types of abstract ideas. He then sorts out which of Berkeley's arguments go with which type of abstract idea, which arguments do and do not work, and how they might be repaired. Though Pappas admits that some modified versions of the concepts might survive Berkeley's criticisms, he holds that Berkeley's arguments are largely successful especially against Locke's versions of these doctrines.Pappas also ties Berkeley's denial of abstract ideas to his heterogeneity thesis (HT) defended in New Theory of Vision. This thesis maintains that what is perceived by one sense is numerically and specifically distinct from what is perceived by another; round as seen is distinct in both senses from round as touched. Berkeley considered HT an advance in perception theory andsaw abstract ideas as a threat. To admit an abstract idea of round would imply that there is an idea of the same kind common to sight and touch. Since this would undo HT, Berkeley had to combat abstract ideas. Berkeley's independent arguments against abstract ideas do not entail the truth of HT, Pappas holds, but they remove one source of evidence an opponent might use against it.New Theory of Vision also introduces Berkeley's concept of immediate perception. On the basis of this and the broader concept used in Berkeley's later works, Pappas establishes that "physical objects" (collections of sensible qualities) are the objects of immediate perception. This allows Pappas to make some sense of the claim that Berkeley can be read as a CSR. To do this, Pappas distills ten commitments of CSR and demonstrates... (shrink)

Environmental ethics consists of a set of competing theories about whether human actions and attitudes to nature are morally right or wrong. Ecocentrists are holists whose theory locates the primary site of value in biological communities or ecosystems and who tend to regard actions interfering with the progress of an ecosystem toward its mature equilibrium state as prima facie wrong. I suggest that this form of ecocentrism may be built on a questionable scientific foundation, organismic ecology, and that a better (...) scientific foundation for environmental ethics may be found in individualistic neo-Darwinian population biology. However, the latter approach probably requires a corresponding shift away from ethical holism and toward approaches locating value primarily in individuals. I call such environmental ethicists ‘extensionists’ and briefly outline an extensionist environmental ethic. (shrink)

Agricultural biotechnology refers to a diverse set of industrial techniques used to produce genetically modified foods. Genetically modified foods are foods manipulated at the molecular level to enhance their value to farmers and consumers. This book is a collection of essays on the ethical dimensions of ag biotech. The essays were written over a dozen years, beginning in 1988.

Most people care about animals, but only a tiny fraction are vegan. The rest often think of veganism as an extreme position. They certainly do not believe that they have a moral obligation to become vegan. Gary L. Francione—the leading and most provocative scholar of animal rights theory and law—demonstrates that veganism is a moral imperative and a matter of justice. He shows that there is a contradiction in thinking that animals matter morally if one is also not vegan, (...) and he explains why this belief should logically lead all who hold it to veganism. Francione dismantles the conventional wisdom that it is acceptable to use and kill animals as long as we do so “humanely.” He argues that if animals matter morally, they must have the right not to be used as property. That means that we cannot eat them, wear them, use them, or otherwise treat them as resources or commodities. Why Veganism Matters presents the case for the personhood of nonhuman animals and for veganism in a clear and accessible way that does not require any philosophical or legal background. This book offers a persuasive and powerful argument for all readers who care about animals but are not sure whether they have a moral obligation to be vegan. (shrink)

Many philosophers of biology have embraced a version of pluralism in response to the failure of theory reduction but overlook how concepts, methods, and explanatory resources are in fact coordinated, such as in interdisciplinary research where the aim is to integrate different strands into an articulated whole. This is observable for the origin of evolutionary novelty—a complex problem that requires a synthesis of intellectual resources from different fields to arrive at robust answers to multiple allied questions. It is an apt (...) locus for exploring new dimensions of explanatory integration because it necessitates coordination among historical and experimental disciplines . These coordination issues are widespread for the origin of novel morphologies observed in the Cambrian Explosion. Despite an explicit commitment to an integrated, interdisciplinary explanation, some potential disciplinary contributors are excluded. Notable among these exclusions is the physics of ontogeny. We argue that two different dimensions of integration—data and standards—have been insufficiently distinguished. This distinction accounts for why physics-based explanatory contributions to the origin of novelty have been resisted: they do not integrate certain types of data and differ in how they conceptualize the standard of uniformitarianism in historical, causal explanations. Our analysis of these different dimensions of integration contributes to the development of more adequate and integrated explanatory frameworks. (shrink)

Despite influencing the social sciences since the 1930s, S. S. Stevens' "operationist" philosophy of science has yet to be adequately understood. I reconstruct Stevens' operationism from his early work and assess the influence of various views (logical positivism, behaviorism and the "operational viewpoint" of P. W. Bridgman, among others) on Stevens. Stevens' operationism emerges, on my reconstruction, as a naturalistic methodological directive aimed at agreement, founded in turn on the belief that agreement is constitutive of science, the scientific community, and (...) objectivity. Further, I show that operationism is historically and philosophically independent of the views mentioned above. (shrink)

Einstein's General Theory of Relativity links the metrical structure of the cosmic order (or "cosmology") to the contingent distributions of matter and energy throughout the universe, one of the chief areas of investigation in astrophysics. However, presently we have neither devised nor discovered system of uniform relations whereby we can make our cosmological measurements intelligible. This is "the measurement problem of cosmology." Using both historical ideas (such as A.N. Whitehead's work in the 1920s) and contemporary evidence and theories, argue that (...) the measurement problem has neither been fully understood nor rightly interpreted. With better grasp of this problem, such as am attempting to provide, the prospects for solution look brighter. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Abstract Introduction The Inscrutability of Objectual Reference Empiricism, Naturalism, and Provincialism References.

Donald Davidsons classic argument for the impossibility of reducing mental events to physicallistic ones is analyzed and formalized in relational logic. This makes evident the scope of Davidsons argument, and shows that he is essentially offering a negative transcendental argument, i.e., and argument to the impossibility of certain kinds of logical relations. Some final speculations are offered as to why such a move might, nevertheless, have a measure of plausibility.

Agricultural biotechnology refers to a diverse set of industrial techniques used to produce genetically modified foods. Genetically modified (GM) foods are foods manipulated at the molecular level to enhance their value to farmers and consumers. This book is a collection of essays on the ethical dimensions of ag biotech. The essays were written over a dozen years, beginning in 1988. When I began to reflect on the subject, ag biotech was an exotic, untested, technology. Today, in the first year of (...) the millenium, the vast majority of consumers in the United States have taken a bite of the apple. Milk produced by cows injected with a GM protein called recombinant bovine growth hormone (bGH), is found, unlabelled, on grocery shelves throughout the US. In 1999, half of the soybeans and cotton harvested in the US were GM varieties. Billions of dollars of public and private monies are being invested annually in biotech research, and commercial sales now reach into the tens of billions of dollars each year. Whereas ag biotech once promised to change American agriculture, it now is in the process of doing so. (shrink)

In 1973, Richard Sylvan began his seminal essay, "Do We Need a New, an Environmental Ethic?" with these words: "It is increasingly said that ... Western civilization ... stands in need of a new ethic ... setting out people's relations to the natural environment." In the intervening years, it has increasingly been said that Western civilization is in need of ecocentrism, an ethic according to which a thing's value is derived from its contribution to the integrity, stability, and beauty of (...) ecosystems. Do those interested in agricultural ethics need a new, an ecocentric, ethic? I argue that the answer is no. Agriculturalists must look elsewhere for an adequate ethic setting out our relations to the natural environment. (shrink)

Acknowledgements -- Preface -- Introduction: in the spirit of Zora : traveling with the "eternal feminine" -- Returning to the margin : changed -- African American literature : like a bridge over troubled water -- Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes : envisioning the (new) "Negro artist" -- Striking down colorism in color struck : a play in four scenes -- We are not tragically colored -- Langston Hughes writing about the "the Negro artist and the racial mountain" -- Transgressing (...) boundaries of white male power in the ways of white folks -- Blackness from the inside out -- Seeing "women loving women" -- Black female journey to sexual in(sight)fullness -- "What if Mama finds out?" : entering a life-changing place of self-liberation -- When "nobody was lesbian, nobody was feminist, nobody was gay" -- Higher education that makes a difference -- "Still children of the night" : survivors against the odds -- Black boys' lives still matter : in search of a loving father -- "Spilled salt" on a Black mother's table and the struggle for maternal survival -- No shame: recovering our mother's way(s) of being -- Remembering where we came from -- Getting to the heart of the lessons : Black women teaching "other" ways of loving -- Epilogue: continuing to teach in the image of "an alternative Black man" -- It's about revolutionary manhood. (shrink)

This book explores the effects of technology on the education of digital generations and the technology-mediated interaction that will prepare these generations for an unpredictable future. It discusses strategies and approaches for curriculum design, professional development, and other aspects of school organization involving technology.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 41.2 (2003) 280-281 [Access article in PDF] Maria Dimova-Cookson. T. H. Green's Moral and Political Philosophy: A Phenomenological Perspective. New York: Palgrave, 2001. Pp. xiii + 175. Cloth, $60.00 Like most today who study Green's idealism, Dimova-Cookson finds only his ethics to be still relevant. She rejects his metaphysical epistemology and consequently his teleology, but offers an alternative. Dimova-Cookson proposes a Husserlian analysis (...) of Green's positions on goodness and a critical defense that attempts to rectify his apparently inconsistent formulations of that concept. Provided we recall that Husserl's method is not unproblematic and resist the tendency to adjust the doctrine analyzed for the sake of methodological fidelity, there is reason to be open to the author's proposal. Several of Husserl's ideas seem relevant to Green's thought: intentionality; "noematic content of the determinable X" and "horizon" developed in Ideas; intersubjectivity; and Husserl's teleological descriptions of phenomenological consciousness. But Dimova-Cookson pursues none of these. She employs Husserl's problematic "epoche" and a "necessary feature of human practice" she calls "the phenomenological circle" (69, hereafter, PC).Dimova-Cookson uses PC to resolve certain confusions imputed to Green. Green himself anticipates the charge of vicious circularity concerning the moral ideal when he reasons that "the unconditional good for man" is the good will and that the good will is to will the unconditional good. He subsequently explains that the circularity is not logically vicious for the two terms describe different states of one teleological process of a will actualizing its potential for perfection, and are distinguished "as the complete from the incomplete." According to Dimova-Cookson, Green hasn't escaped the charge and needn't try. Rather, he has unwittingly stumbled upon PC, but confused matters by carelessly conflating perspectives on the senses of "good" which she believes are two different definitions of two different things, elements in PC. "Circularity in explaining morality can be legitimized," she says, provided one rigorously clarifies the shift in perspective between the two elements in PC (70ff.). This move, she holds, can resolve certain contemporary criticisms. But note that if Green hasn't escaped the charge, and it is a genuine logical circle, then, as Husserl recognized, it cannot be avoided simply by making a rigorously clear shift in perspective. That would be a psychologistic response to a logical problem. Moreover, even if clarity of perspectival shift is useful here, it fails to capture the continuity in the moral progress of the self-actualization of moral agent to moral citizen. Finally, had Green represented his distinction in such dichotomous fashion, this would have compromised the teleological component of his explanations and made it more difficult to keep his theory from being conflated with utilitarianism. Green is far-sighted here, given recent tendencies to confuse utilitarianism and teleology on the basis that both can be represented as versions of consequentialism, a confusion based on the fallacy of undistributed middle.Most of Dimova-Cookson's connections are highly suggestive and many of her distinctions useful. She teases out several possible meanings of Green's conception of good, and is to be commended for having tried to answer some of his critics and calling attention to the valuable content of Green's doctrine. Her attempt at a phenomenological approach is novel.It is troubling, though, that Dimova-Cookson thinks it is also transcendental, for her words reveal a grave confusion about what this means. When discussing what she thinks is either transcendental or phenomenological, she uses the language of contingent psychological experience; e.g., "storing experience" (44), and projecting and relating to one's self-image (65). The process of learning she describes is more reminiscent of Piaget's "assimilation-accommodation" model than anything Husserlian or transcendental. Yet the author considers this an "advanced transcendentalism" wherein "our experience is preconditioned—that is, made possible—by the conceptual baggage that has accumulated and is always present at the back of our minds" (27). If one holds that we accumulate... (shrink)

When social issues involve questions as momentous as global survival, ethicists should do more than analyze arguments and formulate principles. They should help us find stories to put our values into practice. In the essays collected here, I have tried to tell my story in the hope that others might find it instructive.

I worked for many years constructing my version of the global case but, as I continued to try to strengthen it, I slowly began to lose confidence. My unease began with several personal experiences. One of our children had a common but annoying physical ailment, for which our pediatrician prescribed a very expensive nasal spray. When I inquired about its cost, the pharmacist informed me that it was a new, genetically engineered, product. The spray worked, and Karen and I never (...) batted an eye. (shrink)

Thus the extrinsic argument against ag biotech. In considering whether it is a good argument, I believe we should simply assume that is true. Substantially risky technologies, perhaps by definition, should not be developed. Seeing no reason to contest, therefore, I will focus on.